


Middle Earth Drabbles

by Aiyestel



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Memories
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-11
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2017-12-26 06:52:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aiyestel/pseuds/Aiyestel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various drabbles, mostly from my 750 words a day writing exercise. More tags, relationships and characters to be added later. </p><p>1. Dis reminisces about all that was lost on the quest to reclaim Erebor. Canon-compliant.<br/>2. Post LOTR-the four hobbits suddenly find they understand Bilbo's distant looks a little bit better now.<br/>3. Bilbo remembering a time long past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All that is Lost, All that is Left

There are moments when the mountains rest heavy above her. When she lies still in the watchful hours of the night and feels like she might break beneath the weight of all that is lost and all that is left.

Those moments are fewer now, further between, but no less heartbreaking. No less painful. She gasps for breath while her heart clenches like a vice inside her chest. She aches and she staves off tears until her fingers are numb and still they fall. Like her kinsmen. Like they have all done, save her. Her parents. Her brothers. Her husband. Her sons. They are all gone. 

Still she remains.

Sometimes she hears him in a crowd, a deep tenor over her shoulder that has her whirling around, searching for someone who no longer walks the earth. She expects to see blue eyes crinkling at the corners, the curve of a smile, but she never does. She wishes to feel his hand on her shoulder, his forehead bent against hers as they share a memory of better times. There is so much she wants to say to him now, so much she wishes she had said back then. But he is gone.

Other times it's the laughter that stops her heart or a flash of brown and gold. She had memorized their voices, their laughter, once, but now the memories are faded and she hears them in strangers. At times she wishes she heard them more, though more often she's glad she doesn't. A mother should not forget the way her sons laugh or the cadence of their voices. 

But time has other ideas.

She traveled to Erebor once. It seemed the least she could do for them even though she would have preferred to never lay eyes on that lone peak. They gave up everything for it after all. For that bloody mountain. Dain had asked her to stay, she was a Durin as surely as he was--more so, she thought, but didn't say it aloud--but she couldn't. There was nothing for her there. Nothing but grief and solemn reminders that so many had died before their time for a legacy that she had never been convinced was worth it. 

_You don't understand_ , the voice would say, only it wasn't Thorin's anymore. It was her father's. Her grandfather's. In the end she thinks Thorin saw what their legacy really was. At least she hopes he did. She tells herself he saw clearly before the end because surely her brother would not look at the lifeless bodies of her sons, of his nephews, and think it was worth the sacrifice. She has to tell herself that in order to sleep at night, and sleep is hard to come by as it is.

When she had stood at the edge of Mirkwood and looked up at the mountain she'd pushed back the bile that had risen in her throat. The next leg of her journey, the path through the battlefield, would be the hardest. Stone cairns had been erected over the place where the sons of Durin had fallen. Their bodies lay entombed in the depths of the mountain, alongside those of their forebears, but the people needed a place to visit too. They needed a reminder of the sacrifice. 

But she was the daughter of kings and she did not break before them. Eyes watched her as she placed two silver clasps among the stones, but her tears were saved for an empty room. She descended into darkness to visit them, to pound her fists against the stone that laid between them, to curse her brother for taking her sons on a fruitless quest, for letting himself be lost. Because it was fruitless. There was no return high enough for what she had lost. What _they_ had lost.

The stay had been brief, a formality seen to, an obligation met. She offered Dain empty promises when he asked her to return, but neither expected any differently. Not really. 

_They say time heals all wounds_ , the grey wizard told her after she had left Erebor behind her for good, _but I have not found that to be the case. Whatever time holds for you I am sorry for your loss._

Perhaps he meant it to be comforting, or perhaps it was merely a statement. A tumble of words that spill out when their master believes the time to be right, as is the predisposition of his kind. Either way it did not help to mend the loss she would forever carry with her.

She was the last of her house. A daughter without parents. A sister without brothers. A mother without sons. 

For now she was all that remained.


	2. Not Quite the Same

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hobbits aren't meant to leave the Shire...not really. Tumblr-drabble. Short, but I wanted to keep it around.

They know now. They understand.

The change sits behind their eyes, in haunted moments and in memories that sit heavy on their shoulders. There’s something else there, or something missing. No one can really tell for sure. They might have returned to the Shire, but it’s not the same. They’re not the same.

And suddenly they understand those far off gazes Bilbo got when spring had returned and dusk settled in among rolling green hills. That long pause every year on a day when the harvest is over and the first chill of winter clawed through the air finally made sense. He was searching for that part of himself that hadn’t come home, that sliver of his heart that had been lost among mountains and woodlands, beside campfires and beneath the hooves of ponies.

The world is not in books and maps anymore. It’s not ink on parchment. It’s earth and water, metal and fire. It’s real and it’s out there, beyond the borders of the Shire. They’ve seen it.

And they won’t ever be quite the same.


	3. Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another tumblr-drabble I want to hold onto.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find my tolkien-themed blog at: westfarthing-of-the-shire.tumblr.com

There are days, after everything is said and done, when it’s all too easy to remember that home isn’t the same as when he left it—even though home isn’t the one that changed. Those are the days when Gandalf’s voice is almost more than a memory in his ear.

_"And can you promise that I will come back?" the hobbit he once was asked Gandalf who had been perched beside his armchair._

_"No," The fire had cast the wizard’s face in shadow as he bent to take a long pull off his pipe. "And if you do, you will not be the same."_

Gandalf had been right. He wasn’t the same. Not anymore.

And on those days when he rose from his warm, soft bed instead of the cold hard ground; when it was the whistle of a tea kettle that broke the morning silence instead of the hearty chatter of thirteen dwarves; he missed it. He missed them.

He loves his armchair, and his books. He loves the home his father had built for his mother. But the echoes here are not just theirs anymore.

Sometimes in the late evening hours, when Hobbiton lies still beyond his round, green door, he can almost hear them.

_“Blunt the knives and bend the forks!”_

_“Smash the bottles and burn the corks!”_

_“Chip the glasses and crack the plates!”_

_“THAT’S WHAT BILBO BAGGINS HATES!”_

He closes his eyes and inhales the sweet scent of a cup of tea as he listens for those whispers. He had been a different person back then. He’d fussed over handkerchiefs and his mother’s best plates. He’d fainted over the thought of a dragon and fumed at a mark on his door. He’d hated the very thought of leaving his home to go marching off on some crazy quest. He found he didn’t hate it quite so much anymore.

And the hobbit he is now would give all of his china to have them fill his home again.

To go off with them again on another grand adventure.


End file.
